Zak Swartz
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zakswartz.bsky.social
Zak Swartz
@zakswartz.bsky.social
Faculty at Marine Biological Laboratory, starfish wrangler, camp counselor. Developmental Cell Biology & Lots of Eggs. ⭐️🐟
www.theswartzlab.org
Reposted by Zak Swartz
From an accidental discovery of hidden biology to a new framework to understanding and diagnosing rare disease. Thrilled to share the most recent work from our lab and the amazing Jimmy Ly.

wi.mit.edu/news/alterna...
Alternate proteins from the same gene contribute differently to health and rare disease | Whitehead Institute
Iain Cheeseman and colleagues reveal the underappreciated role of single genes producing multiple proteins in atypical presentations of rare disease, and present case studies of affected patients thro...
wi.mit.edu
November 7, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
We built a targeted protein degradation–based system to mimic reproductive age-related aneuploidy in young eggs - revealing how chromosome errors associated with female infertility arise with age. 🧬✨
With @jiyeonleem.bsky.social and our team at Yale MCDB.

Read: www.nature.com/articles/s43...
A versatile cohesion manipulation system probes female reproductive age-related egg aneuploidy - Nature Aging
To study pathways that lead to aneuploidy during aging, the authors provide a system that enables cohesion protein depletion in mouse oocytes, mimicking effects that occur during aging. They uncover a...
www.nature.com
November 4, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Come work with us!
We are hiring!

Interested? Apply here: go.mbl.edu/AS1887
November 4, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
New preprint! Graduate student Océane Marescal leverages quiescence - proliferative hibernation - to reveal unexpected dynamics for “constitutively”-localized centromere proteins. To understand the logic of cell division, you need to consider non-dividing cells.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
The dynamics of centromere assembly and disassembly during quiescence
Quiescence is a state in which cells undergo a prolonged proliferative arrest while maintaining their capacity to reenter the cell cycle. Here, we analyze entry and exit from quiescence, focusing on h...
www.biorxiv.org
September 9, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
I hope to take a PhD student in 2026 to study siphonophores. Please reach out if you are interested in applying this fall. For examples of recent lab projects see www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... and academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...
August 28, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
This postdoc position is still open! Apply if you want to come work with us on asymmetric cell divisions in spiralian embryos! postdocs.stanford.edu/prospective/...
July 7, 2025 at 8:51 PM
A little late with this one, but we got to go hunting for sea urchins on Gemma with the Semester in Biological Discovery (SBD) students. Thanks Captain David Bank and naturalist Scott Bennett, and Alex Megerle for the great writeup! 🌊🌊🌊

www.mbl.edu/news/close-u...
Up Close with Urchins: Undergrads Collect Lab Specimens on the Gemma | Marine Biological Laboratory
www.mbl.edu
June 3, 2025 at 1:23 AM
Love this article! Feeling pumped to share the awesomeness of echinoderms again very soon in Embryology 2025
June 3, 2025 at 12:29 AM
We have shared detailed protocols for the expression, purification, and use of VitelloTag-Cas9 (in sea stars) on our website. We hope that this will be a useful starting place for working in your own favorite organism!
www.theswartzlab.org/tools-and-pr...
May 27, 2025 at 11:26 PM
At last! The plasmids from our VitelloTag paper ( journals.biologists.com/dev/article/... ) are now available on Addgene: www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

We hope they might be useful for you to deliver Cas9 in your favorite organism. Stay tuned for detailed protocols on our lab website.
VitelloTag: a tool for high-throughput cargo delivery into oocytes
Summary: VitelloTag, a method for transporting protein cargo into oocytes, facilitates microinjection-free CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in multiple species.
journals.biologists.com
April 16, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Another terrific Developmental Biology of the Sea Urchin & Other Marine Invertebrates is done! Thank you to all attendees for sharing your awesome science, the co-organizers for their hard work, our sponsors, and @mblscience.bsky.social for being such a great venue. Photo credit to Bob Morris 👏
April 8, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
Honored to have given the keynote lecture at the DBSUMI meeting. Such an exciting dev bio community!

Thanks @zakswartz.bsky.social for the invitation and kind hospitality at wonderful @mblscience.bsky.social. The naturalist approach to science and rich history in this place are inspiring.
April 4, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
Also a blast from the past! Another preprint is now available from my first postdoc in the @arnonelab.bsky.social at @szndohrn.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 28, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
Some good news during these difficult times. Please check out our new preprint. We built a new tool to probe the origins of high oocyte aneuploidy rates at advanced female reproductive ages. This NIH funded work was led by a fantastic postdoc in the lab, Jiyeon Leem. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A versatile cohesion manipulation system reveals CENP-A dysfunction accelerates female reproductive age-related egg aneuploidy.
Female reproductive aging is accompanied by a dramatic rise in the incidence of egg aneuploidy. Premature loss of chromosome cohesion proteins and untimely separation of chromosomes is thought to unde...
www.biorxiv.org
February 28, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
New preprint from my Postdoc in Zak Swartz’s lab at the @mblscience.bsky.social, in collaboration with Carsten Wolff and @. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 28, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Zak Swartz
New preprint drop! Check out work from @jimmy-ly.bsky.social et al for how protein isoforms generated by alternate translation initiation create dual localization, contribute to mitochondrial function, and are mutated in disease. "Blue-tutorial" thread below.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 28, 2025 at 10:41 AM